A Heist
by cubefreak101
Summary: Megaton is well-defended town. Nobody thought that a heist in the town would be possible, but when the robbery of Craterside Supply turns into a hostage situation, the town bands together to beat a trio of cunning raiders and save Moira and her customers


**AUTHOR'S NOTES: Hello, there. Cubefreak101 here, presenting for you the first chapter of my new fanfic, "A Heist". I originally planned for this to be part of the first story arc for the Stranger, the main character of my other Fallout fanfic, entitled "A Stranger" (which you should definitely go read /shamelessplug). I decided to leave "A Stranger" as a oneshot at the behest of my reviewers. I reworked this story and I now present to you… "A Heist".**

**A Heist**

**Chapter 1: Rescue**

An explosion rocked the front entrance of Craterside Supply. Dust and debris sprayed across the front room as the shockwave swept various odds and ends off of the counters and tables. The rusty metal door was ripped easily off its hinges and flipped into a tall locker at the opposite end of the room, knocking it over with a loud clang that added to the sudden cacophony of noise. Through the thick clouds of dust rushed Lucas Simms and three members of the Megaton militia, all armed and prepared to fire at less than a moment's notice. After a moment of tension wherein the heads of every member of the entry team whipped around the room, frantically searching for any gun-wielding maniacs, the team came to the anti-climactic realization that the room was empty.

Despite the explosive and flashy entry, the only thing staring back at the sheriff and militiamen was a severely disarrayed room that had once been Moira Brown's storefront. Lucas Simms relaxed for a moment, lowering his Chinese assault rifle ever so slightly. Then his eyes widened, coming to sudden insight. He spun to the side and poked his rifle over the counter, looking down. There was no evidence of the team of bad guys that he had a moment ago imagined were hiding behind the counter, preparing to jump up and cut them all down. He breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed again. That is, until he noticed the large blood stains that lay across the floor and wall behind the counter.

The sheriff grimaced slightly in disgust, and motioned silently for the militia members to come over and take a look. Simms turned one away as he came to look and motioned for him to cover the doorway leading upstairs. The militiaman nodded quickly and spun around, going into a crouched position and aiming his shotgun at the indicated doorway.

"What do you make of it?" One of the men asked Simms in a whispered tone. "Do you think someone could lose that much blood and live?"

Simms just shook his head in silence. After another moment where nothing was said, the man spoke again.

"Well, we'd better clear the rest of place. There's no one on the catwalk up there, but they could be hiding with everyone in the stairwell or the bedroom." Simms did not respond for a moment, as he was currently transfixed by the blood. The pattern was strange and something about it was off; it just didn't look right to him. After yet another moment where the militia awaited orders from the silent Lucas Simms, he finally spoke in the same whispered tone.

"Yeah, let's go. Danny, you stay down here and keep an eye on this room while Jules, Greg, and I clear the rest of this place." The aforementioned people stacked up on the doorway as per the diagrams they had studied from the book so generously provided by that McClellan bastard.

Like a well oiled machine which was activated by Simms' quick hand signal, the three entered the doorway, covering all angles of the room with their respective weapons. The stairwell was clear of enemies but full of evidence of the events that had taken place here. There were blood stains across the floor in random places (though they were very small in comparison to the large one behind the counter), papers scattered across the floor, multiple spent shell casings from what looked like some form of automatic rifle, as well as a cabinet toppled lengthwise across the stairs in what may have been a struggle or an attempt at a makeshift barricade. Regardless of whether or not the barricade was intentional, the three stepped over it easily and advanced up the stairwell slowly. The thoughts running through each man's mind were unquestionably of how they were going to take down the assailants that must be holed up in this room, due to the fact that they had not been in any previous parts of the store.

To everyone's surprise, the bedroom was empty of foes as well. There were small blood stains in here as well. The bed was made neatly, but the rest of the room was in disarray. Apparently everything had been overturned in an attempt to remove as many valuable items as possible. This was beginning to seem like quite a useless rescue mission. However, the idea that this operation had not yielded combat was not the most disturbing thing about all of this, no. The most upsetting part, at least to Lucas Simms, was that there were no hostages_._ There was nobody there. If the robbers were not there and the hostages were not there, _where in the hell were they?_ It was a very good question, frankly. Each and every exit had been covered, and nobody had left the store. That was for sure.

Simms strode over to the walkway that allowed one to look down into the storefront. No blood out here. That was a pleasant change. He leaned out and waved to Danny, saying, in a normal tone of voice now, "All clear Danny! No ideas on where the hell everyone went, though."

Simms turned around to enter the bedroom again, when his boot kicked something small and metal. He naturally glanced down to see what it was. What met his eyes was so strange; he had to pick it up. It was a tin sculpture, apparently fashioned out of old cans. It was what looked like some sort of bird, but with odd proportions and solid, featherless wings. Actually, its entire body was smooth. It didn't have anything indicating feathers sculpted or carved into its surface. He turned it over and over, examining the strange specimen. On the back end of the thing were carved some words in a scratchy and barely-legible handwriting:

PENGWIN

BY DR. KÜDEN GATFACHT

"Pengwin"? What the hell was that? He gave up on the thing and tossed it to the side. Just another weird trinket that Moira was keeping around, he supposed. At this thought, he remembered Moira, the eccentric but lovable shopkeeper who would never hurt a fly. Well, unless it was to further her research… But all the same, Simms couldn't bear the thought of something horrible happening to the poor woman who had never done anything to deserve what she must have been put through in the past 24 hours.

He sighed in sadness at this whole situation but also in anger at those damned raiders who had the balls to pull this. Security would have to be beefed up from now on. Nobody gets into Megaton without first proving they have legitimate business or are a trustworthy individual. People wouldn't like it and they'd probably hate him for it, but that was what would have to happen. This kind of thing just couldn't take place again. He wouldn't allow it. As mayor and sheriff, it was his job to protect the people and by God he'd do it no matter how much they complained.

Upon returning to the bedroom, he addressed the idle militiamen.

"Well, what do we do now? I'd say we wait for them to appear because they couldn't have got outta the town limits, but if you'd have asked me if they coulda got outta Craterside twenty minutes ago I would've laughed in your face, so I don't know. I just don't know…"

Jules slid a cigarette out of his pocket and pulled out a heavily tarnished lighter, which he used to light up. After taking a nice long drag, he gave a sigh. "This whole goddamn fuckin' situation is bullshit." Feeling satisfied with this commentary, he took another long drag of his cigarette and said nothing further. Jules was a man of few words, most of which were profanity.

Greg seemed thoughtful for a moment. "Well, we have to keep looking, don't we? There must be something in this place, something that we missed that can show us where they went." He bent down and pulled up a chair, righting it, and sat down. There was a creaking sound, and then he went to the floor as the legs splintered from under him. The chair had evidently been weakened by some trauma, and the further trauma of Greg sitting down in it was too much for the thing. Simms and Jules merely looked down at Greg as he sat splayed, utterly surprised, across the floor. The sound of him hitting the floor, a metallic clang, reverberated throughout the room and possibly the whole store. Simms raised an eyebrow. Jules covered his eyes with his hand and shook his head disapprovingly. Danny screamed from downstairs.

Greg forgot his surprise and embarrassment in less than a second, jumping to his feet immediately. Jules spit his cigarette out and stomped it out with one blow from his boot. All three men brought their weapons to bear immediately, though there was nothing to aim at. Danny's voice burst from the room below them, now speaking discernible words.

"Everyone! Get down here now! There's –

His voice was cut off by a string of gunshots. The trio froze, but only for the half-second that it took for the sounds of Danny's return fire to echo through the walls. Two pairs of gunfire raged downstairs as Simms shouted over the noise to Jules and Greg, "GET DOWN THERE NOW!" The two were obeying before he got the first word out. Greg and Jules bounded down the stairs quickly, and Simms dashed across the room, heading for the catwalk. In the small amount of time it took for the Jules and Greg to descend the stairs and for Simms to reach the entrance to the catwalk, the gunshots stopped. There was a pause wherein the sheriff peeked from the door out over the catwalk and into the storefront.

There he witnessed a bleeding Danny laying on the floor, his weapon in the hands of the raider who was standing over him. The raider had a set of scarred leather armor on and short bleached white hair that was sparse on the right due to what looked like a nasty scar. The raider raised a revolver and pointed it at the head of the bloody and pleading Danny. There was a sickening pause as the raider considered this. Then he fired one shot. Danny fell still, and Lucas, in a great fervor for his fallen comrade screamed out and brought his gun to bear on the raider.

Simms fired a wild burst at the man, which was, in retrospect, a poor idea. The raider whipped around as bullets pinged around him and met Simms eyes. He raised the 10mm SMG that had been taken from Danny's hands and fired a volley at Simms. A short series of metallic thuds issued from the metal around Simms and tiny holes plinked into existence upon the metal walls surrounding his person. He withdrew behind the wall, taking cover before the bastard got lucky and actually hit him.

Unfortunately, when he moved his legs to get back into the bedroom, he realized he _had_ been hit. The combination of the small caliber of the bullets and the adrenaline rushing through his system must've dulled the pain of the bullet to the point where he didn't notice it. He noticed it when he tried to pull back and fell on his ass. It was then he saw the shallow puncture in his right thigh. Blood was slowly tumbling out of the wound and wetting his pant leg. He tried to stand up and then cursed as he tumbled to the ground again.

From his position behind the wall, he heard two a shotgun blasts; Jules was firing at the man. Greg's assault rifle also sounded, as well as some return fire from the raider's revolver. The raider gave a cry of pain, and the thuds of three pairs of boots moved through the storefront room.

"He's behind the counter, get him!" shouted Greg as Jules could be heard grunting assent.

The scraping of metal and the stomping of boots. Then, nothing. Simms waited, hoping to hear something to indicate what had possibly happened downstairs. He tried to move himself to peek out over the catwalk again. He tenderly stood up and, babying the wounded leg so as not to cause further damage if the bullet was still in his thigh, hobbled out onto the walkway and saw a perplexed Greg and Jules standing around the counter. There was no sign of the raider.

"WHERE DID HE GO?" shouted Simms. To his horror, Greg turned to him and shrugged. "There's no way… You've gotta be kidding me! Where did he even come from?"

Jules walked over to Danny and bent down, putting his fingers to his neck; he was feeling for a pulse. Jules looked up and saw Simms looking at him from above optimistically. He sadly shook his head and turned to Greg, giving him the same signal. Simms looked at the blood pooling under Danny's lifeless form. This had been a disaster.

"Did you get any piece of that raider?" Simms shouted down. Just then, his leg gave out and he had to lean forward and clutch the railing to keep from tumbling off the walkway. He was beginning to feel his wound now, and in a big way. The adrenaline was wearing off.

"Jules tore up his arm with some buckshot. Knocked his revolver right out of his hand. It's got an inscription that says, 'Carlisle' on it. I guess it must be the name of one of the raiders." Greg shouted back up. Then, noticing Simms' sudden change in demeanor, "Are you okay? We saw him open up on you."

"Yeah, he got me on the side of my thigh. Sheer luck… I'll be alright, though. It just hurts like hell." Simms managed to stand up straight once more, but not without effort. He had to be strong; he was the leader here and they had just lost one of their own in a frankly mysterious attack. "So the revolver and Danny's corpse are the only signs that he was ever in here?" It was a rhetorical question. Simms sighed in anger for what seemed like the fiftieth time in the past ten minutes. "HOW COULD HE JUST DISAPPEAR??"

With the help of the others, Simms descended the stairs and helped to examine the counter area, which they decided must be rigged somehow to allow the raiders to exit the store. But how could they do that? It would have to be there in the first place; a passage that Moira never told anybody about. At first it seemed a ridiculous notion, but the more the three thought about it, the more likely it seemed Moira could have some sort of secret passageway for experiments or other discreet doings. After a few minutes of searching, Simms' attention was again directed towards the large bloodstain on the floor behind the counter. Something _was_ weird about it. He couldn't get over the pattern and how it was off.

One side of the stain was swept forward, like something was run through it. It didn't match the rest of the blood pattern. This particular side was smeared and uneven. Simms bent down to examine it further, but his damn leg gave out. He fell forward, stopping himself from falling fully by landing on his hands and knees. His hands hit the metal with a distinctly odd hollow clang. He lifted up one hand and hit the wall. It sounded just like hitting thick sheet metal should sound. He hit the area of the blood stain irregularity. A completely different sound. It sounded almost hollow. Hollow.

"I found it! Come over here and look at this!"

"What is it?" Greg asked.

"Listen…" Simms demonstrated his tapping experiment for Jules and Greg. "It's hollow." He explained. "And with a little luck…" His fingers slid around the blood stain for a moment, and then he felt something jar beneath him. He crawled back, and managed to pry his fingers under a hairline crack in the floor, which turned out to be a square of metal just wider than a man of average build. Simms slowly lifted it up and looked into blackness below.

"Awesome! You found –

The room exploded.

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_**A Preview Of The Next Chapter:**_

_**24 Hours Earlier**_

"_I know, isn't it fascinating?" The "doctor" said, positively beaming over the positive reception of his newest piece of artwork. He was planning to sell it for about 20 caps, but the shopkeeper seemed so enthralled that he was considering tripling the price… She'd pay. He was pretty certain of that…_

"_Well, I'll buy it! I've never seen something so fascinating!" Said Moira, positively glowing, like usual. "How much?"_

"_Hm… I usually sell my sculpture for around 60 caps each," That was a lie. "But I think I could give it to you for—_

"_How's all the money in the register sound?" A gruff voice sounded from behind the Doctor and Moira. They both spun around, and saw a masked man holding a revolver that was pointed directly at their heads. Past this man's shoulder, the incredulous shopper and shopkeeper witnessed the mercenary guard and another masked man locked in a brutal hand-to-hand struggle over the guard's Chinese assault rifle._

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**AUTHOR'S NOTES: Alright, then! This has been the first chapter of what will hopefully be a well-received series. As you may have been able to tell, this first chapter is set in the middle of the story. I plan on having the next the chapters lead up to the events of the first, and then have the story resolve. Read and review please, as always :)**


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